Why Clint Eastwood used a fake baby in ‘American Sniper’
It might be the single highest-grossing movie of his entire career as either a writer or director, but regardless of its critical and commercial merits, the lasting legacy of Clint Eastwood‘s American Sniper has turned out to be the laughably unconvincing fake baby.
Despite winning strong notices from critics and becoming so irresistible to audiences that it ended up netting $547million at the global box office, American Sniper isn’t regarded as one of Eastwood’s top-tier efforts from behind the camera.
The project even won an Academy Award for ‘Best Sound Editing’ amongst six nominations in total, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Actor’, but if you were to ask a hundred people to name the single most memorable scene from the entire movie, then there’s the distinct possibility the majority will answer with the fake baby.
In what’s supposed to be a serious dramatic scene – one that’s admittedly well-acted by Bradley Cooper – the eye can’t help but wander to the actor’s hand not-so-subtly cajoling the plastic infant to give the impression of movement, shattering immersion and suspension of disbelief by virtue of a hilariously and blatantly fake doll that looks like it was picked up in a rush from the nearest place that sold toys.
According to screenwriter Jason Hall, the actual baby that had been cast in the role turned up with a fever and was unable to complete its contractual obligations, while the backup baby no-showed. As a result, Eastwood was left with no other option but to draft in the manufactured replacement.
Cooper may have played the scene with the utmost sincerity, but he was fully aware that what he was doing was ridiculous. “I couldn’t believe it, like, I couldn’t believe that we were working with a plastic baby,” he said to Ellen DeGeneres, “I was like, ‘This is nuts'”.
Conceding that his attempts to wiggle the fake baby with his finger to try and convince an audience it wasn’t an inanimate object didn’t work, Cooper joked that he’d saved the production $100,000 in visual effects cost by doing it himself, “I was like, ‘Watch this, eat your heart out Muppets'”.
Co-star Sienna Miller was just as tickled, suggesting the fake baby “needs its own credit, really, or a spinoff maybe”, but not without suggesting “it looked like something from Alien“. It certainly undercut the dramatic heft of American Sniper to see Cooper doing his best to distract everyone from the clearly lifeless object he was wielding at the time, but at least they’ve been able to joke about it.
Eastwood is known as one of the most economical directors around who only shoots a couple of takes before moving onto the next setup, so there was realistically little chance he’d allow his schedule to be disrupted by an absentee baby, necessitating the need for a preposterous stand-in.
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